


Come Home

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, ostensibly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-13 00:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16006379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Frank doesn't believe in soul mates.





	Come Home

Frank doesn’t believe in soulmates. Not any more, not after Maria.

The idea of a soulmate was undeniably nice. The concept that somewhere out there was a person who would love you, fully and completely, no matter what. A person you could love the same way.

The way Frank sees it, you get connected to another person that way, you can’t live without them. Once you’re tangled up enough to know the connection is there, you physically cannot live without that other person.

Maria had been that for Frank. Everything with her had been so easy, so natural, so beautiful. Except when she died, he just spent a lot of time wishing he’d died too. He remained bitterly, stubbornly alive. He wanted the world to stop so he could process, so he could grieve. The world didn’t stop though; everything kept on moving. In the grand scheme of things, nothing fucking changes.

So soulmates?

Bullshit.

Love is real, but love is fragile. Love cuts from all sides. Loving someone smears your dark all over them, and when you’re as bloody and as wretched as Frank, it drowns the light of every person it touches. He doesn’t have many people left to his tiny inner circle – Curtis, Karen, they’re really it – but even them he keeps at an arm’s length, the better to keep his shit to himself, to not pollute them.

Maybe that’s why he comes into this thing with David deciding to hate him. David, who’s family is still out there, grieving him. David, who knows all kinds of secrets about Frank, tries to use them to pull his strings. David, who, when Frank appears in his doorway that first night,  _laughs_ , like seeing Frank is a relief, like they’re in something together.

He clings to that hate for the first few weeks, fighting it when a slow, hideous respect for the man starts to form. He watches him all the time; he can’t help it. It should get better when they come to an agreement as to what they’re doing here, but it doesn’t. David should be more wary of him, but instead he bleeds understanding, gives Frank space, and he’s already fooled Frank once, so Frank’s guard just builds and builds, waiting for David to try killing him.

David doesn’t watch him. David makes him tea (he doesn’t drink it, but it stays warm at his elbow and it smells nice) and David sits near him and David banters at him, rambling about nothing.

The more they start to work together, once things get rolling, the harder it is to find his disgust for this man, this man who ruined lives trying to do the right thing. The sickest part, to Frank at least, is that one day he’s thinking about that, about how David ruined so much just trying to do the right thing, and realizes he’s  _proud_  of David. David did what a lot of people would have refused to do, David took initiative, David tried his damnedest to do right. And it had destroyed  _everything_ , there had been no  _justice_ , no grand revelation of corruption.

Just so much death. So much pain.

Frank can relate to that. At least David made that stand. So few people would have.

It hits Frank suddenly that if he could go back and kill Carson Wolf over again, he’d do it. He’d take things slower, knowing what he knew now. Knowing what the man had done to David and his family. Wolf had gotten off easy.

The fact that he’s angry on David’s behalf makes him feel strange, panicky. Because they’re sinking into one another, getting used to to each other’s presence; needs and space and how they deal with anger, how David gets passive aggressive rather than lash out, how Frank wishes the little shit would just throw a damn punch so they could have it out in a way that made  _sense_. They take too many liberties, make little digs at one another that earn dry laughs instead of bitter quiet or snapping retorts.

He hasn’t actually, actively been angry  _at_  David for days. He’s been… it’s felt like  _something_ , here. Something close and almost comfortable. Something he was glad to come back to after being out, working.

After the shit show at Gunner’s, Frank feels David’s eyes on him more often, tracking him, following him. It’s not fear though, he’s not waiting for Frank to hurt him. He watches Frank – god, the comparison comes so natural and so horribly  _easy_  – the way Maria would when he first got home on leave and everything was still raw and fresh.

He watches Frank like he knows the kind of pain he’s in and wants to spare him and when he realizes that, he responds the same way he always had when he’d caught Maria with that look on her face. He forces himself to act more put together, forces himself to get over the bullshit. Because Maria hadn’t deserved the concern he’d tormented her with, and maybe David didn’t either.

They’re drinking one night when David leans over and kisses him. Frank makes a point to never have more than a couple fingers of anything harder than beer, but David gets white girl wasted when he’s upset.

Frank feels his heart stop, actually cease to beat, in his chest. Time, which has always moved steadily, relentlessly forward, stops for a bit so he can make note of the strangely sweet feeling of David’s beard against his face, the tang of whiskey on his breath, the gentle brush of fingers against his neck. The kiss goes on for too long for Frank to call it shock when he jerks to his feet and walks away. He didn’t kiss David back. He wouldn’t do that; David’s lonely and spends all his free time watching his family on a live feed try to pick up the scattered pieces he’d left them and move on, and he was looking for comfort in a physical way from someone who was nearby and sympathetic. It would be taking advantage if he wanted what David was offering (he refuses to take the necessary self-assessment to determine if he  _does_  want it or not) and so he does the right thing and extracts himself.

They were dead men. They were also both married. Frank wouldn’t let David cheat on Sarah. David would thank him in the end.

It’s some time later that Sarah kisses him. Between the two of them, the Liebermans are going to give him some kind of fucking complex. He’s thinking that before he gets himself together well enough to extract himself, gently letting Sarah down not just because he Cannot Do That but because he doesn’t want her to be in pain. She’s not as drunk as David, but she’s warm and flushed and he knows well enough that’s why she’d tried it. She misses her husband, and Frank’s been coming around and inserting himself in the Liebermans lives like he belongs there.

That doesn’t justify anything, the want he feels coiled in him.

David is extremely drunk when Frank makes it back to the power station, because of course he is. Frank doesn’t commit most of what he says that night to memory, but he’ll never forget the brittle, almost understanding, “you at least kissed  _her_  back, right?”, with all it’s subtle emphasis and passion. It sticks in his mind, like David asking if he missed sex. How was he meant to answer that?

It’s so early in the morning the next day that it might as well not matter. Time bleeds that way sometimes. Frank can’t think about time too much, because David has crawled into his cot, sliding a palm up Frank’s chest, rucking his shirt up. He’s very awake, all at once, but David doesn’t do anything more than rest his hand against the flat of Frank’s belly. He curls against Frank’s side, his forehead against Frank’s bicep.

Frank doesn’t know what the right thing to do is. So he closes his eyes and listens to the rhythm of David breathing. And somehow they fall asleep like that, because Frank wakes up hours later with a body spooning up against him, David snoring gently. He realizes, acutely, that things are getting bad here. He slips out of the bed and starts making soup to help David with his hangover. He’s almost done panicking when David sits up, barely having time to grab the trash can nearby the cot before he dry heaves.

David seems happy not to mention it. Frank goes with that.

No one climbs in anyone else’s bed after that. Things move too fast for it to become an issue.

He knows he’s fucked when the dream of his family and David’s family coming together for an impossible celebration, everyone happy and warm and living in a sweet haze of excitement and love, starts to become a regular thing. It ends with the same bloody finality every time, as if to remind him that he can’t even dream of nice things anymore.

He wonders, after the torture, after Rawlins is dead beside him and Billy is in the wind, if he’s dreaming again when David appears beside him. He cradles Frank up and close, screaming and crying and trying to drag a response out of Frank, and honestly, who cares enough about The Punisher to give that kind of performance.

“My friend is dying! My friend...”

It hurts a lot, hearing those words. Because he wants to go, he wants to just finally give up. This is too goddamn much and he is Tired. But it’s so clear how badly he’s hurting David, and he recognizes those horrible, broken sobs, that kind of soul-hurt denial of the agony.

 _I can’t take it if you go_ , David is saying, though he’s beyond words.  _I will die, if you die_.

He wants to tell him how wrong he is. He knows from experience. It might feel like you’re dead for a while, and you might wish you were dead for even longer, but the loss wouldn’t kill you. That was the cruelest part of it.

He doesn’t believe in soulmates, not any more. Except there’s something in David’s eyes when he sees Frank struggling to keep himself awake, to respond to his pleas. Some kind of terrifying love and relief that Frank’s not gone yet. The idea that he’s fallen in love with this man is suddenly so hauntingly inevitable that Frank can only smile weakly as David cheers him as a ‘scary, beautiful man’.

It’s harder, after everything is over. Because David has a home to go to and Frank can’t trust himself to be around such good people. He knows he needs to disappear. Instead, he drives David home, and lets him try to talk him into coming inside.

He can’t. He just can’t, not after all the intimate family time he’d already stolen from David. Not when he knows Sarah is waiting to kiss David, and Frank is a poor substitute for that. David can see his terror even as he smooths it down, and smiles gently.

“Hey,” David says softly, reaching out to rest a hand over Frank’s. Frank leans almost imperceptibly closer to the touch. “Hey, you know, this is okay. They’re gonna understand. Sarah – god, Sarah would be so happy. Do you really not get it, that we  _want_  you here, Frank?”

Frank exhales sharply through his nose, tells himself he’s not shivering. David leans over and kisses him. He sighs as David pulls away, chasing the exchange.

“I’m nervous, Frank. I know that makes me an asshole, but this is… I’m scared shitless to go in there, after everything, you know?”

“You are an asshole,” Frank agrees softly, because it’s what David wants him to say. Frank’s surprised to realize he doesn’t actually mean the words. He turns his hand over and catches David’s palm against his own, lacing their fingers together, and this time it’s David who sits a little straighter.

“Wow,” David says dryly. Frank squeezes his hand in warning. “You know, I never – I thought you would end up being more of a ‘rough blowjob behind a dumpster’ kind of guy, not a ‘holds hands in the car’ guy.”

Frank can feel himself colour a little at that, but it gets the chuckle David was angling for. “You think about me sucking you off a lot?” He asks sharply, just to watch David blush too.1

“Well now I’m never going to get  _that_  out of my head,” David says weakly. He stares at their hands, still interlaced on the steering wheel. “Frank, please, come in. We’ll have dinner. The kids want to see you. Sarah wants to see you. You  _know_  I want you around.”

And that’s the worst of it, Frank thinks. David really thinks he does. He doesn’t recognize his attachment to Frank as the trauma bonding it had been. Frank was a comfort for David right now because he’d been there for him during the worst days of his hiding. Sarah and the kids would help David get better, but Frank hanging around would just make it worse.

“I can’t, David.”

He sighs, and slowly, David disentangles their fingers. “You have my number, Frank. Please, don’t just… don’t disappear on me?” There are tears in his eyes, and they shake his voice. “Don’t leave me wondering if you’re alive or dead, Frank, not again. Keep, keep in touch, even if it’s just a phone call sometimes okay?”

This time, it’s David caught off guard by the kiss, Frank unbuckling and leaning into his space so fast he can’t react. Frank’s heart is beating a mile a minute, and he thinks David’s pulse might match.

“If you still want me around in a few weeks, I’ll have my phone on,” Frank says, easily as he can, given that his heart is thundering. “But you need those few weeks, David. Just with your family. Not me.”

“You  _are_  family.”

“You need time without me, David. If you still want me later, you have my number. I’m a phone call away.”

David pushes away tears and huffs out a stabilizing breath. “Okay. Okay, Frank. I’ll call you in… we’ll say three weeks.” He looks at him in a significant way that seems to say  _please answer_ , and Frank just nods.

Frank watches David disappear into his house and drives away before anyone else can come out and try convincing him to stay. It’s a bittersweet parting – David deserves to go home to his family. Frank’s not sure what he deserves, but he’s starting to think maybe this unending loneliness isn’t it.

Three weeks later, to the day, he wakes up and turns his cellphone on. Two hours later, it rings.

He picks it up, and could almost cry when David says, without the wasted time of a hello, “Come home.”


End file.
